“Out of the last 13 years renting we have neve......”
1 Star Review
Sep 10,2020
By:
'Jacqueline'
Sep 10,2020
Branch: Canterbury, Canterbury Innovation Centre,University Road
Services: Lettings (as a Tenant)
Would you recommend?: No
Postcode: CT1
Branch: Canterbury, Canterbury Innovation Centre,University Road
Lettings (as a Tenant)
Postcode: CT1
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Out of the last 13 years renting we have never had as many difficulties as we did with Abode. The girls working there have the best intentions, but there is a severe lack of efficiency and professionalism when dealing with tenants. Not only did we average sending 3 emails before receiving any kind of response, some of the many issues we had over the 1 year with them were:
- Gave us the wrong set of keys when we moved in.
- Wrote the wrong address on the inventory.
- Wrote 'professionally cleaned' on all rooms on the inventory despite obvious skum around the sink, dirt all over cupboards and then tried to charge us for a stain on the carpet they had taken photos of on their own inventory. (£40 was knocked off our deposit when we got it back, with no explanation why...but we've lost all energy to send unanswered emails to try and chase them).
- Made us pay the deposit twice as they had made us sign a blank contract that didn't state the deposit value, they only realised this the day before we were meant to move in and frantically sent us the documents again to sign. Because everything was so last minute the bank transfer hadn't gone across in time for us to move and so they made us pay the deposit twice, the second time in cash.
- Paid the wrong amount of the second deposit back to us.
- Abode and the landlord frequently came to the property with less than 24 hours notice, or came on a fortnightly basis... despite us asking for some privacy.
- When I wrote to them to complain about all of the above, was told we should be 'grateful' for what they had done, like come in on a Saturday to let us into the property (we work every other Saturday in hospital...not much empathy for us to give there for doing her job).
We feel it could be a good company if they had training in communication and did simple things like acknowledging an email, but the severe lack of it made the year with them unnecessarily stressful and I wouldn't wish anyone else to have to deal with that.
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On the day that you were due to move in you had neither signed the tenancy which had been sent to you for electronic signature, or paid the deposit or first months rent. We called you first thing in the morning to advise that we couldn't release keys without all of these being received.
As you were not in Canterbury to personally collect keys you sent your parents who insisted on paying cash. We waited for your parents to obtain cash, outside of our office opening hours that day and cancelling other appointments which were booked in to ensure that we were able to release keys to you. A simple thank you in accomodating this is just manners, rather than the need to be grateful. The deposit was paid back to your parents as requested but they obviously hadn't checked their account, as chased this a week after they had received it back.
There was a clear coffee/tea stain on the carpet at the end of the tenancy which needed to be removed. This was not there at the start of the tenancy and the carpet was only 6 months old when you moved in.
We do understand that there were issues during your tenancy with the landlord arriving unannounced and as you know we spoke to her repeatedly, about the need for allowing you privacy and giving notice of her visits. As you are aware it was not us who visited you regularly or unannounced, and we did our best to stop the landlord from doing so.